Owies

I've debated back and forth about whether I should write this post or not, but I've decided that these are memories.  Memories that keep me up at night thinking about what could have happened, but memories no less.  First of all...when I was really little, I seemed to have a propensity for getting burned.  One time I pushed a chair up to the stove to help my sister make dinner.  Unfortunately, I decided to stir the pot that was on the back burner and not the skillet that was in the front.  I reached over and of course, the skillet tipped onto my stomach and burned a half circle into my nightgown and through to my skin.

Another time I was helping put away dishes (see what a helpful child I was?).   I climbed onto the wet counter so that I could reach the top shelf.  Just as one of my siblings was opening the oven to get dinner, I slipped and fell right on top of the oven door.  Well, it appears that my children have the same tendencies when it comes to being around things that are "hot, hot, hot!" 

The first incident occurred when I was using what I used to consider an awesome end-of-the-island outlet to plug in my griddle and cook tortillas.  While I was on the phone with Randall, Cameron decided to come along and pull on the cord.  The skillet, tortillas and all came down right on top of him.  I was freaking out, and pretty much just screamed to Randall that Cameron had pulled a hot griddle onto himself before hanging up on him.  Luckily he was close to home, so he didn't have to wait too long to see how Cam was.  It took a while for Grandpa Stewart and I to see exactly where he was burned, and we were amazed that he didn't seem to have any large burns.  Luckily his shirt protected his chest, where the flat part of the skillet was resting, and it miraculously missed his face altogether.  He still has some interesting scars.  Carter calls the scar on his hand the winking smiley face scar.

A couple of months later while we were camping in Manti, there was an even scarier situation.  We arrived to the campsite later than planned (as usual) so Randall had to set up the tent in the dark.  I was watching the kids by the fire/helping them roast marshmallows.  Needless to say, this was a pretty stressful task for me to do alone, so I immediately got up to take Cameron to the tent once I heard it was finished.  Lydia was sitting on the camp chair next to me roasting marshmallows, and I told her I'd be right back.  Less than a second later, I heard a crash and looked over to see Lydia IN THE FIRE.  She had tried to climb down from her camp chair, and it had collapsed and catapulted her into the fire.  I practically threw Cameron to the ground and grabbed Lydia as fast as I could (which seemed like hours).  It was really hard to see in the dark where she had been burned but in the end she only had a few tiny burns on her fingers and an inch long line on her wrist.  If any other kid had fallen into the fire like that it would have been much worse, but Lydia grabbed onto a big log that was sticking out of the coals and was able to hold herself up with her massive upper body strength.  I still can't believe how blessed we were that her hair didn't catch on fire even though it was down, and that she didn't have any serious burns.

On a side note, by the time we put the kids to bed that night Lydia had already asked me five times if we were going to be able to roast marshmallows again the next day.  She was obviously a little less traumatized than I was.   

Both of these situations could have been SO MUCH WORSE.  I keep thinking, what if it had been a crockpot full of hot stew instead of a griddle?  What if it had been a roaring fire instead of burned down coals?  Thoughts like these keep me up at night, and serve no purpose.  When I was little I was ALWAYS scared at bedtime.  I remember my Mom once telling me that there's no point to living in fear.  Most likely no one will break into our house and murder us (my fear as a child), so why waste your time thinking about what COULD happen?  If it's going to happen, it will happen whether you worry about it or not.  Although my fears have changed somewhat over the years (I'm still a little scared of being murdered in my sleep) they're still just as much of a waste of time as they were back then.  I think it's important that we try to be as careful as we can with our kids and try to prevent anything bad from happening to them, but in the end we don't know everything that will happen in their lives.  I've just got to have faith that Heavenly Father will get me and my kids through anything that we may have to face.  On that somewhat cryptic note, I'll leave you with a bit of advice...
1.  Don't ever plug ANYTHING into those end-of-the-island outlets!
2.  Don't let your kids sit too close to the fire!
3.  Don't let this post give you more things to incessantly worry about!  ;)